The petroglyphs and pictographs reproduced here, states Professor Newcomb, "are relatively rare and absolutely irreplaceable human documents. They can often reveal much about the ways of ancient men, including aspects of life which otherwise would forever go unrecorded, for they may illustrate how a vanished, nameless people perceived themselves and their world, their relation to God and to each other, and their fantasies and fears. They are, then, a treasure to be valued and a heritage to be preserved."
Category: Social Science

This comprehensive view of carvings and paintings on stone by Native Americans from 200 B.C. through the nineteenth century surveys the rock art of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, northern Mexico, and west Texas, providing an incomparable visual record of Southwest Indian culture, religion, and society. Rock carvings and paintings are important sources in the archaeological and historical interpretation of Southwest Indians. Rock art reflects the cosmic and mythic orientation of the culture that produced it, and understanding of prehistoric peoples, both hunters and gatherers and the Hohokam, Anasazi, Mogollon, and Fremont cultures, and the Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache Indians. Culturally significant events such as the shift in prehistoric times from spear and atlatl to the bow, or, in the historic period, the introduction of the horse into the Southwest, are recorded in rock art. The illustrations--thirty-two color plates, nearly 250 photographs, and numerous line drawings--bring together in one volume petroglyphs and rock paintings that are scattered over thousands of miles of desert and mesa, giving the reader an overview of Indian rock art that would be nearly impossible to achieve in the field. Indian Rock Art of the Southwestexamines from an archaeological perspective the rich legacy of stone drawings and carvings preserved throughout the Southwest. Professional and amateur archaeologists and historians, as well as the general reader with an interest in Indian art, will find this volume a valuable resource.
Category: Art

The rock art of Texas is not fully known in a descriptive sense and the fascinating and challenging Pecos River style paintings warrant exhaustive study, but the total number of sites with paintings in this style is unknown. This book is an attempt to both reproduce the rich and diversified rock art of a large region and to fix this art in its proper cultural context.
Category: Rock paintings

Four thousand years ago bands of hunter-gatherers lived in and traveled through the challenging terrain of what is now southwest Texas and northern Mexico. Today travelers to that land can view large art panels they left behind on the rock walls of Rattlesnake Canyon, White Shaman Cave, Panther Cave, Mystic Shelter, and Cedar Springs. Messages from a distant past, they are now interpreted for modern readers by artist-archaeologist Carolyn Boyd. It has been thought that the meaning of this ancient art was lost with the artists who produced it. However, thanks to research breakthroughs, these elaborate rock paintings are again communicating a narrative that was inaccessible to humanity for millennia. In the gateway serpents, antlered shamans, and human-animal–cross forms pictured in these ancient murals, Boyd sees a way that ancient hunter-gatherer artists could express their belief systems, provide a mechanism for social and environmental adaptation, and act as agents in the social, economic, and ideological affairs of the community. She offers detailed information gleaned from the art regarding the nature of the lower Pecos cosmos, ritual practices involving the use of sacramental and medicinal plants, and hunter-gatherer lifeways. Now, combining the tools of the ethnologist with the aesthetic sensibilities of an artist, Boyd demonstrates that prehistoric art is not beyond explanation. Images from the past contain a vast corpus of data—accessible through proven, scientific methods—that can enrich our understanding of human life in prehistory and, at the same time, expand our appreciation for the work of art in the present and the future.
Category: Art

Topics range from the mammoth- and bison-hunting Paleo-Indians of over 11,000 years ago to the various nomadic and agricultural groups encountered by sixteenth-century Spanish explorers.
Category: Juvenile Nonfiction

Useful for academic and recreational archaeologists alike, this book identifies and describes over 200 projectile points and stone tools used by prehistoric Native American Indians in Texas. This third edition boasts twice as many illustrations—all drawn from actual specimens—and still includes charts, geographic distribution maps and reliable age-dating information. The authors also demonstrate how factors such as environment, locale and type of artifact combine to produce a portrait of theses ancient cultures.
Category: Social Science

In the tradition of Ian Frazier's Great Plains, and as vivid as the work of Cormac McCarthy, an intoxicating, singularly illuminating history of the Texas borderlands from their settlement through seven generations of Roger D. Hodge's ranching family. What brought the author's family to Texas? What is it about Texas that for centuries has exerted a powerful allure for adventurers and scoundrels, dreamers and desperate souls, outlaws and outliers? In search of answers, Hodge travels across his home state--which he loves and hates in shifting measure--tracing the wanderings of his ancestors into forgotten histories along vanished roads. Here is an unsentimental, keenly insightful attempt to grapple with all that makes Texas so magical, punishing, and polarizing. Here is a spellbindingly evocative portrait of the borderlands--with its brutal history of colonization, conquest, and genocide; where stories of death and drugs and desperation play out daily. And here is a contemplation of what it means that the ranching industry that has sustained families like Hodge's for almost two centuries is quickly fading away, taking with it a part of our larger, deep-rooted cultural inheritance. A wholly original fusion of memoir and history--as piercing as it is elegiac--Texas Blood is a triumph.
Category: History